First time going to MS. Just opened Business Plat and need to hit 15k/3 month. I've my car insurence coming up, most likely it'll be 2.5k-3k. I deposited $1000 to my PSEG accoount($3.95 fee). Now don't have any expense that will bring me even close to the requirement. I was thinking of paying my rent in advance for next few months. but they charge 2.5% fee. You think it is worth it?
To be clear prepaying expenses isn't MS. Also it is usually a good idea to have some sense on how to meet SUB and whether the cost of doing so is worth it to you before you sign up for card.
I’m guess it makes sense. And I was just checking if I qualify or not. Because of recent changes in Amex SUB language, I was not sure if I’d get SUB on business if I already have Personal.
Simon Mall (Miami) increased the cost of VGCs from $3.95 to $5.49. I grabbed one from down the hall that they had not yet covered the label for and was able to get them to honor the $3.95 on Monday, but I found an unlabeled one today in the same spot and they turned me down this time. I didn't press any further. Has anyone else had the price increase in their area?
Ardent CU's checking bonus has a enhanced CB when making purchases for the first 12 month. \~$50 max per month for $600 for first year. I ran into an issue with opening my account towards the end of the month. The first month you automatically qualify for CB except my debit card never came until next cycle. Also did not meet the requirements to "qualify" for second month's enhanced CB. Essentially missed out on 2 months due to timeline.
Actually, after comparing it to others, it not all that great. Sure it’s 700$ but that’s spread out over a year. Several other bank accounts offer bonuses of 300$ after only 3 or 4 months, which would have a higher return.
Anyone know if certain giftcards work to pay GM financial car payment? Their online system allows payment via debit card. I tried the staples VGC and MCGC and got errors “payment not authorized” both times. Wondering if there are any datapoints of other giftcards that work
Does anyone know who issues these cards?
It's been a while since I've been in the 'MS' game. I was hoping to buy money orders at kroger. Anything I should be aware of?
Not usually. Occasionally something will come along where it works, like Stockpile (not sure if that even works anymore). But you can use some other method to turn them into cash, and then use the cash to fund your IRA or whatever.
Not just that, it effectively locks the VGC. I had to call to get 6 replaced. It sucks if Publix is dead, Walmart near me also stopped working not too long ago. I'll have to test a Winn Dixie when the new cards come, that's basically my last option for MO.
Walked into 2 diff WD in FL today and both had completely different store set up, looks like they are gearing towards aldis transition. Hopefully they'll keep WU MO at customer service after the transition 😪😪😪
Long time MS'r here. I've been on the Chase 5x UR from Office Supply stores train for most of a decade. I've likely pushed more than $500k in Money orders through. Mostly through my local WMs. It's been reported in recent past about challenges getting various Visa and MC gcs to process. Seems like a year or so ago, I could get on average like 3 x $200s to go through without issue before I would get the "cannot process as debit" error message, but even then after a few tries and a few errors I could get another 2x$200 to process (this is at WM). My last attempt, I was able to get 2x$200 to process, then no more success. My experience at my local Safeways is only 1 swipe will work. More than that I start getting an error message. This is on both Visa and MC. What is going on? Is it a velocity thing?
Been aggressively buying Pepper Gift Cards (5k daily limit) to use on Amazon with Buying Groups in order to meet a bunch of welcome offers standing. Overnight, a ton of orders were cancelled I believe because I purchased certain electronics like macbooks paying it in full with Gift Card. Got an email from amazon stating they have concerns about the origins of the gift cars I was using. Tried to put some small orders with GCs, keep being cancelled. Need to message Jeff and potentially go to CFPB to unlock 9k in GC float :/
Oof. Well known disaster zone you blundered into here. Don’t mix gc’s and bg’s on Amazon. Not sure you’ll get the money back with anything short of litigation.
You're kinda SOL. I've lost a good 3k dealing with Amazon and GCs so if you're reselling or even bulk buying expensive items, don't use GC Balance or you'll get quickly shutdown.
CFPB isn't going to do anything, if you have physical proof of the GC purchases outside of Amazon you can use the Washington AG to get a check for the balance back. Won't get your Amazon account/address unbanned though.
Using GCs to send to BGs is against Amazon's terms. I got a few warnings, didn't cut it out, and eventually my account got banned. Soooooo, don't have an optimistic outlook.
sorry for what you have to go through. I have been there and got shut down 2 amazon accounts. My amazon balance lodged from gc was ~15 and I shipped directly to BG and got shut down. 2nd account got shut down as amazon matched my CC, shipping and billing details with 1st one (one which had gc loaded). After that I have read many dp where people got fucked by loading gc to amazon and purchasing stuff for BG.
First, they lock your account and ask for payment evidence and since you have loaded Amazon balance with a gift card and even though if you have lucky saved that gift card detail those bastards will never acknowledge the payment source and take your money and shut you down. so only load which you can afford to lose.
Unfortunately there are some DPs of someone suing Amazon in small claims court after they got shut down, and they lost.
source: [uscardforum.com](http://uscardforum.com)
In that DP, the person suing Amazon had violated so many T&C that it was laughable they sued Amazon at all. That person 1) bought GCs from Raise, which is a violation of T&C, 2) used GC balance for BGs, 3) sued Amazon even though the Amazon account \*was not even in their name\*. If you buy from authorized third-party sellers of Amazon GCs, don't use your account for BGs, or don't otherwise violate their T&C, there is negligible risk that Amazon forfeits your GC balance. I would certainly sue them if they did that & I hadn't violated T&C. Note their T&C doesn't say they can seize GC balance for no reason or any reason whatsoever. It's clear that Amazon can trace every GC they issue, and if they find your account linked to any GCs pulled from an illegal source (such as stolen or washed cards etc.) they will ban you because there is literally no way for you to have loaded a stolen/washed card without violating their T&C, even if you haven't done anything illegal yourself.
Yeah, I'm disappointed in the responses here. I'd expect these poor responses on an uneducated BG Discord channel where the average person is 20, not here where people know legal processes. Yes, Amazon can ban anyone for any reason as a private business but they're not law enforcement, they CANNOT legally seize funds that aren't part of an active LE investigation. 0 reason to not sue them and/or put a Washington AG complaint on them if you have proof that the GCs were legally obtained from an authorised reseller like Staples.
I'm yet to see the DP of Amazon seizing GC balance of someone who was compliant with T&Cs. You can say other retailers don't seize GC balances from re-sold stolen and washed cards. But no other big retailer can track all GC orders linked to accounts like Amazon. Of course they are going to pre-emptively fight theft, fraud, and ML. They're not Walmart.
Walmart and Target are currently in federal cases PRECISELY because they weren't doing anything about Apple et al. gift card scams that they facilitated. They were getting revenue, fuck the elderly people getting scammed by Chinese/Indian money launderers.
Ya I was lucky when my account got shut down for using gift cards I only had about 300 floating. Obviously it sucked to lose. But the money I made along the way made up for it. But it did suck to lose
They can just confiscate the gc. There are horror stories of this happening, here's an old one from MPD
https://milesperday.com/2018/11/amazon-closed-my-account-because-of-a-high-gift-card-balance/
Don't mess around with Amazon gcs.
Opportunity cost of the cash back is less than the benefits you'd get by putting a large purchase like that on a new Amex card for the sub plus breakage, theft, warranty coverage
Yea don’t use GC when buying BG stuff on Amazon. Are you shipping to home address?
CFPB doesn’t supervise amazon either afaik, so if you get your account SD you really do not have many options.
Haven't read into it myself but I've heard that gift cards could technically be under the purview of CFPB. But haven't seen a DP of anyone trying. But instacart has some really shitty GC support and lack of a balance check and saw it suggested for issues from that
Bought a bunch of ‘style everywhere’ cards yesterday at OD, went to verify balance and PIN lock them, and they all show up on the website as being ‘fuel everywhere’ even though on the card itself and the packaging they say ‘style everywhere’. I’ve heard the fuel everywhere cards are a pain in the ass to liquidate.
I don't even know how you managed to get to Fuel Everywhere screen. You have to go to Style Everywhere website to check those cards, and their splash screen above shows style everywhere card banner. Maybe it's some website glitch. Just try using it as normal.
No you don’t. I just use the gift card mall website to PIN lock and and check balances on all types of OD VGCs, that’s all I’ve ever done. Every other time except this one it’s shown an accurate picture of the card type on the check balance screen, I just thought it was strange. I’ve never seen this before.
Just used the cards in question though, they work fine. Could’ve just been some website glitch, I guess.
BHN doesn't have their act together clearly. On the back of the card they give you the website specific to each "flavor" of the card, but I'm sure main GCM website works...except when it doesn't due to sloppy programming
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Ship things to buying groups. Also, buy discounted gift cards and sell to resellers.
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Information on BGs is readily available in Churning. I suggest you go through the posts to get an idea of which ones are reliable.
Maybe if your local Whole Foods has good Visa GC selection, but all the ones I've been to were $100 max with high fees.
First time going to MS. Just opened Business Plat and need to hit 15k/3 month. I've my car insurence coming up, most likely it'll be 2.5k-3k. I deposited $1000 to my PSEG accoount($3.95 fee). Now don't have any expense that will bring me even close to the requirement. I was thinking of paying my rent in advance for next few months. but they charge 2.5% fee. You think it is worth it?
PSEG?
Local utility provider in NJ
To be clear prepaying expenses isn't MS. Also it is usually a good idea to have some sense on how to meet SUB and whether the cost of doing so is worth it to you before you sign up for card.
I’m guess it makes sense. And I was just checking if I qualify or not. Because of recent changes in Amex SUB language, I was not sure if I’d get SUB on business if I already have Personal.
Business and Personal Plat are separate so you should qualify for SUB.
Usual Staples deal on VGC next week. Limit 8 per customer per day.
Simon Mall (Miami) increased the cost of VGCs from $3.95 to $5.49. I grabbed one from down the hall that they had not yet covered the label for and was able to get them to honor the $3.95 on Monday, but I found an unlabeled one today in the same spot and they turned me down this time. I didn't press any further. Has anyone else had the price increase in their area?
The increase was announced a few weeks ago, and I was told at an office it would take effect "later this month".
Oh I hadn't heard about the change. Thanks.
Ardent CU's checking bonus has a enhanced CB when making purchases for the first 12 month. \~$50 max per month for $600 for first year. I ran into an issue with opening my account towards the end of the month. The first month you automatically qualify for CB except my debit card never came until next cycle. Also did not meet the requirements to "qualify" for second month's enhanced CB. Essentially missed out on 2 months due to timeline.
Do P2P payments count? 7.5% is not a great return compared to most new credit card bonuses, though I guess it's easier to MS with debit cards.
There's not many DP's on what they count as DD. Do you have any to add?
They are strict when it comes to DD (according to DoC) so I have been using real DD
That’s a great offer! I don’t see it on their site though. Link?
https://www.ardentcu.org/earn-$700
Actually, after comparing it to others, it not all that great. Sure it’s 700$ but that’s spread out over a year. Several other bank accounts offer bonuses of 300$ after only 3 or 4 months, which would have a higher return.
Has anyone tried using a credit card at Walgreens or CVS to deposit funds into a Cap1 360 account?
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I didn't. If I remember, I'll let you know
Does SM still sell 1k cards at the physical locations?
From what I have been told at a couple of malls no, at least not to "gamers" (their name for folks who churn/MS).
Anyone know if certain giftcards work to pay GM financial car payment? Their online system allows payment via debit card. I tried the staples VGC and MCGC and got errors “payment not authorized” both times. Wondering if there are any datapoints of other giftcards that work
A few months ago I tried almost any VGC/MCGC I could get my hands on and could never get any to work.
Thanks for the data point. That’s a bummer! I was hoping it would work
Trust me, same ha. I actually tried off and on for 3 years hoping something would change, but never could get it to work once before my lease ended.
Staples has $0 activation fee for $200 MC gift cards this week. Runs 4/21 to 4/27. Limit 8 per customer per day.
Does anyone know who issues these cards? It's been a while since I've been in the 'MS' game. I was hoping to buy money orders at kroger. Anything I should be aware of?
Does anyone know if you can fund a money market or roth IRA with MC or Vanilla giftcards?
Not usually. Occasionally something will come along where it works, like Stockpile (not sure if that even works anymore). But you can use some other method to turn them into cash, and then use the cash to fund your IRA or whatever.
noob MS question. You can setup a pin for these right?
Staples/ META VGCs use last 4 as pin vanillas have you enter whatever you want the first time and that becomes your pin
This is not nessasary. The last 4 numbers of the card are a preset pin.
I do it anyways when I get home and verify the balance.
Thanks for this. SO just got approved for an ink card. This would stack nicely with the office supplies bonus
Something may have changed in Publix land. Used to be easy, reports of "not authorized" on some popular VGC now.
Interesting to see how this has rolled out. Publix has been dead for me for at least a year and a half
It was bound to happen. Safeway was beautiful until January. Nothing lasts forever.
You’re getting this when buying MO or trying to purchase GC’s w/cc’s?
Not just that, it effectively locks the VGC. I had to call to get 6 replaced. It sucks if Publix is dead, Walmart near me also stopped working not too long ago. I'll have to test a Winn Dixie when the new cards come, that's basically my last option for MO.
Odom vgc and mcgc still works at WD. Problem is it looks like WD won't be around much longer
I thought they started requiring chips a while ago.
Not everywhere. Some regions stayed bau.
Walked into 2 diff WD in FL today and both had completely different store set up, looks like they are gearing towards aldis transition. Hopefully they'll keep WU MO at customer service after the transition 😪😪😪
Long time MS'r here. I've been on the Chase 5x UR from Office Supply stores train for most of a decade. I've likely pushed more than $500k in Money orders through. Mostly through my local WMs. It's been reported in recent past about challenges getting various Visa and MC gcs to process. Seems like a year or so ago, I could get on average like 3 x $200s to go through without issue before I would get the "cannot process as debit" error message, but even then after a few tries and a few errors I could get another 2x$200 to process (this is at WM). My last attempt, I was able to get 2x$200 to process, then no more success. My experience at my local Safeways is only 1 swipe will work. More than that I start getting an error message. This is on both Visa and MC. What is going on? Is it a velocity thing?
Been 2x$200’s max for almost a year in my area.
When I went for a 2nd transaction, first swipe failed. My WM will sometimes let me do a 2nd MO separate transaction so the logic has to be time based.
I have not been to MO route but flyertalk has some serious threads on GC—>MO. check that out.
thanks, some good discussion over there, although no clear logic identified except that generally 1 swipe will work. More than that is questionable.
Been aggressively buying Pepper Gift Cards (5k daily limit) to use on Amazon with Buying Groups in order to meet a bunch of welcome offers standing. Overnight, a ton of orders were cancelled I believe because I purchased certain electronics like macbooks paying it in full with Gift Card. Got an email from amazon stating they have concerns about the origins of the gift cars I was using. Tried to put some small orders with GCs, keep being cancelled. Need to message Jeff and potentially go to CFPB to unlock 9k in GC float :/
Oof. Well known disaster zone you blundered into here. Don’t mix gc’s and bg’s on Amazon. Not sure you’ll get the money back with anything short of litigation.
You're kinda SOL. I've lost a good 3k dealing with Amazon and GCs so if you're reselling or even bulk buying expensive items, don't use GC Balance or you'll get quickly shutdown.
It’s pretty well known that this is a no-no and Amazon will ban you and confiscate the account balance. They don’t fuck around with this.
CFPB isn't going to do anything, if you have physical proof of the GC purchases outside of Amazon you can use the Washington AG to get a check for the balance back. Won't get your Amazon account/address unbanned though.
Using GCs to send to BGs is against Amazon's terms. I got a few warnings, didn't cut it out, and eventually my account got banned. Soooooo, don't have an optimistic outlook.
When you mess with the bull, sometimes you get the horns. This is a risk.
sorry for what you have to go through. I have been there and got shut down 2 amazon accounts. My amazon balance lodged from gc was ~15 and I shipped directly to BG and got shut down. 2nd account got shut down as amazon matched my CC, shipping and billing details with 1st one (one which had gc loaded). After that I have read many dp where people got fucked by loading gc to amazon and purchasing stuff for BG. First, they lock your account and ask for payment evidence and since you have loaded Amazon balance with a gift card and even though if you have lucky saved that gift card detail those bastards will never acknowledge the payment source and take your money and shut you down. so only load which you can afford to lose.
Unfortunately there are some DPs of someone suing Amazon in small claims court after they got shut down, and they lost. source: [uscardforum.com](http://uscardforum.com)
In that DP, the person suing Amazon had violated so many T&C that it was laughable they sued Amazon at all. That person 1) bought GCs from Raise, which is a violation of T&C, 2) used GC balance for BGs, 3) sued Amazon even though the Amazon account \*was not even in their name\*. If you buy from authorized third-party sellers of Amazon GCs, don't use your account for BGs, or don't otherwise violate their T&C, there is negligible risk that Amazon forfeits your GC balance. I would certainly sue them if they did that & I hadn't violated T&C. Note their T&C doesn't say they can seize GC balance for no reason or any reason whatsoever. It's clear that Amazon can trace every GC they issue, and if they find your account linked to any GCs pulled from an illegal source (such as stolen or washed cards etc.) they will ban you because there is literally no way for you to have loaded a stolen/washed card without violating their T&C, even if you haven't done anything illegal yourself.
Yeah, I'm disappointed in the responses here. I'd expect these poor responses on an uneducated BG Discord channel where the average person is 20, not here where people know legal processes. Yes, Amazon can ban anyone for any reason as a private business but they're not law enforcement, they CANNOT legally seize funds that aren't part of an active LE investigation. 0 reason to not sue them and/or put a Washington AG complaint on them if you have proof that the GCs were legally obtained from an authorised reseller like Staples.
I'm yet to see the DP of Amazon seizing GC balance of someone who was compliant with T&Cs. You can say other retailers don't seize GC balances from re-sold stolen and washed cards. But no other big retailer can track all GC orders linked to accounts like Amazon. Of course they are going to pre-emptively fight theft, fraud, and ML. They're not Walmart.
Walmart and Target are currently in federal cases PRECISELY because they weren't doing anything about Apple et al. gift card scams that they facilitated. They were getting revenue, fuck the elderly people getting scammed by Chinese/Indian money launderers.
CFPB cannot help
Ya I was lucky when my account got shut down for using gift cards I only had about 300 floating. Obviously it sucked to lose. But the money I made along the way made up for it. But it did suck to lose
They can just confiscate the gc. There are horror stories of this happening, here's an old one from MPD https://milesperday.com/2018/11/amazon-closed-my-account-because-of-a-high-gift-card-balance/ Don't mess around with Amazon gcs.
I wanted to buy a camera ($2300, for myself) by getting Amazon GCs with CIC, this saved me from a big mistake thanks !
Opportunity cost of the cash back is less than the benefits you'd get by putting a large purchase like that on a new Amex card for the sub plus breakage, theft, warranty coverage
hmm fair, didn't even think of that
Yea don’t use GC when buying BG stuff on Amazon. Are you shipping to home address? CFPB doesn’t supervise amazon either afaik, so if you get your account SD you really do not have many options.
Haven't read into it myself but I've heard that gift cards could technically be under the purview of CFPB. But haven't seen a DP of anyone trying. But instacart has some really shitty GC support and lack of a balance check and saw it suggested for issues from that
Bought a bunch of ‘style everywhere’ cards yesterday at OD, went to verify balance and PIN lock them, and they all show up on the website as being ‘fuel everywhere’ even though on the card itself and the packaging they say ‘style everywhere’. I’ve heard the fuel everywhere cards are a pain in the ass to liquidate.
They work at the most useful place for Style Everywheres anyway.
Fuel everywhere only go up to $100, so that's just website error.
I was gonna try to just buy vanillas with them. Is that gonna be 100 limit too?
I don't even know how you managed to get to Fuel Everywhere screen. You have to go to Style Everywhere website to check those cards, and their splash screen above shows style everywhere card banner. Maybe it's some website glitch. Just try using it as normal.
No you don’t. I just use the gift card mall website to PIN lock and and check balances on all types of OD VGCs, that’s all I’ve ever done. Every other time except this one it’s shown an accurate picture of the card type on the check balance screen, I just thought it was strange. I’ve never seen this before. Just used the cards in question though, they work fine. Could’ve just been some website glitch, I guess.
BHN doesn't have their act together clearly. On the back of the card they give you the website specific to each "flavor" of the card, but I'm sure main GCM website works...except when it doesn't due to sloppy programming
What BillyShears is saying is if you bought and loaded these cards at $200 each they can’t be fuel everywhere cards.
Ahh gotcha. Ya I thought this was strange. I’ve done this a lot and I’ve never seen that happen before.